California's nine most dangerous words

1. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, California
Cost-burdened middle-class households: 55.9%
Median single-family home value: $909,836
Median household income: $96,677
Homeownership rate: 53.6%
Two factors contributing to soaring home prices in San Francisco are the slow pace of new home construction and the scarcity of land available for new housing. The average time to issue a building permit in San Francisco is longer than a year, compared to four and a half months in the typical U.S. metro area.(Photo: Thinkstock)

You might be thinking about giving up sweets or going to the gym more. But for the good of your state, the best thing you could do is swear off this phrase: “We want to protect the character of the community.”

The expressed desire to defend community character is a staple of California conversations. It’s routinely aimed at developers, planners or anyone with a transformational vision. But in a state struggling to keep up with changes in housing, economy and environment, there may be no more damaging set of words.

The phrase is powerful precisely because of its imprecision. It is the ultimate dodge, practically meaningless, the NIMBY equivalent of “Yadda, Yadda, Yadda” from the famous Seinfeld episode. But in another, perverse sense, “protect the character of our community” is the phrase that unites us all. It can be used to oppose anything: more housing, more renewable energy, more immigrants. It is used by poor people protesting gentrification that might bring in richer people, and it’s used by rich people worried that affordable housing or homeless services might bring in poorer people.

The defense of community character is a lousy argument in normal times, because neither character nor community is static. People have children, change jobs, learn new things, and age. In doing so, they change their community’s character, because what they need from their surroundings changes.

And in difficult times like our own, the “protect-community-character” argument verges on treason to California and its ideals.

California faces two huge categories of challenges. The first is to catch up on meeting the state’s existing needs — especially for infrastructure, transportation and housing. Housing is controlled at the local government level, where “the character of the community” argument is strongest. The results: a housing crisis, with costs 2.5 times the national average.

But our housing troubles pale in comparison to the dangers the community-protection racket poses for California’s future. The threat of climate change will require transformation in how and where we live, which by definition will change community character. The state needs new development for senior citizens and new transit so we drive less. No responsible community in California should stay the same in these times.

Indeed, change in California communities is long overdue. For 40 years now, since the passage of Prop. 13, California has prioritized community stability — holding down property taxes to benefit existing homeowners and businesses — at the expense of schools, health care and public services. It’s time for that era to end.

But that means we must stop singing the praises of community character and start realizing it’s really the anthem of California’s religion of obstruction. The dark political genius of “protecting the character of the community” argument is that it allows those who employ it to avoid responsibility for their obstructionism. They portray themselves as “stakeholders” merely keeping their neighborhood from getting hurt.

Please. They’re victimizers, not victims. And they’ve been getting away with the crime of shutting their communities off from change, and putting big problems onto the younger, poorer, more diverse generations of Californians.

This New Year’s, it’s time for Californians to banish this noxious phrase from our vocabulary. When we hear others use the phrase, we should point out what it really means:

I got mine, and who cares about anyone else?

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. George Will is on vacation.